A Different Kind of Perfection
by AShellThatSings
Summary: "Keep smiling.  Your perfect man will come along eventually."  She smiles and waits, hoping for a different kind of perfection.


**A/N: Okay, so this isn't Amian. You can guess who this is and I might tell you, but it really could almost be anyone. This isn't a probable pairing. It is almost popular. But it isn't and I repeat ISN'T Amian. (Or Hamy. Ew.) It might be bad. I didn't send this to my faithful grammar ninjas. I wrote it in 30 minutes. **

**I do not own the 39 Clues, smiley faces, or even bandages. **

**A Different Kind of Perfection**

She does it for him. Every note, every chord, everything. It is all for the boy who makes her feel like a princess. The boy who would buy the world for her if she asked. But she doesn't. So he doesn't. She loves the way his hands feel on hers. The sparks of electricity that she felt at first soon become commonplace, as he plays alongside her.

Their piano duet sounds good. Not Janus good, but she thinks for a Lucian and a Madrigal, pretty darn good. He would say that she is playing too soft, and she would try to please him. That was how it always was. He finds a flaw, she tries in vain to fix it.

The boy soon becomes just another one of _them_, another critic. Her hair is too fluffy, he confides as she leans her head on his shoulder. She goes home and straightens it. Her nails are too long, he says as she puts her hand in his. She cuts them. Her waist is too wide, he discloses as she wraps her arm around his. Soon, she looks in the mirror and can't see herself. All she sees is a starved looking girl with a sparkle on her finger.

She thought that once she was engaged love would be easy. She didn't know how wrong she was. Her friends leave her with a parting blow. "We don't know you." Her brother is wrapped up in his business, promising only that she knows what to do. "You're smart," her brother says, "Keep smiling. Your perfect man will come along eventually." As if he would know. He already has the girl.

But then she starts thinking. She thinks about the boy who put the ring on her now bone-thin finger. She thinks about how he was so sweet at first, then has become like a boy-Isabel. The name shocks her into reality and she knows what she has to do.

She gives the ring back. The boy is surprised, staring at it like she gave him a UFO on a plate. He frowns at her. "But you are perfect. Why would you do this to me?" She smiles at him, remembering her brother's advice. "Keep smiling. Your perfect girl will come around eventually." She turns, as if to walk away, then faces him. "You were never the perfect one for me."

She waits. She waits for months, almost a year. She peels the boy off of her mind like she would an ugly scab, but her brother isn't the only one to notice the scar that he left. As she goes back to herself, her friends find her again. They notice the scars. But they also notice that she is prone to smiling, a trait, they decide, isn't bad at all.

Then Christmas came. A Cahill reunion normally would make her scared, scared that she might be looked at for her legacy instead of her, but this one is met with overwhelming enthusiasm. Her brother looks strangely at her every time that she asks how much longer till her fellow Clue hunters arrive. But he answers every time with the same words. "Just keep smiling. Not very long."

They arrive, and she is the first one to greet them. She smiles, of course, reveling in the fact that they are here. They look at her in surprise, having never seen this side of her before. But one of them is almost indifferent. He grins back at her, as if he had just won some important battle. She looks at him and nearly starts to glare, but then she gasps softly. And that is when she realizes who had encouraged her to smile first, before her brother, before _him._ It was this boy, the blonde one who laughed all the time, who agitated her poor nerves time and time again.

If she had not been already completely over _him,_ now she is for sure. The new "him" is much nicer to her, and won't admit anything about himself, or even about her. She doesn't show him the scar left by _him,_ but after that fateful Christmas reunion, they talk on the phone extremely often.

Eventually, she becomes his confidant, and he learns that she isn't the girl he thought she was. After six months of friendship, they go out for ice cream. And that is when he asks her out, officially. She says yes. And eventually they get married.

But the scar that _he_ left is still there. She shows the scar to him one Christmas in their cozy little house, but he laughs and pulls out a bandage. He writes something on it and puts it on her dress, right above her mended heart. She looks down and smiles.

The bandage has two smiley faces with a heart around them both.


End file.
